Some of the most mathematically gifted students in the Outwood family have been in competition at regional challenges across the entire Trust.

Students from the Outwood Grange Academies Trust Maths Masters Program took part in three regional competitions across Outwood Grange Academies Trust Southern, Central and Northern regions.

At the competitions, the students took part in team challenges throughout the day and accumulated points for each round, building up to an overall score that could then be compared across the Outwood Family with the overall winner being the academy that amassed the most points.

This year the winner was Outwood Academy Valley with the team impressively achieving full points in each round.

Paul Upex, Associate Director of Maths at Outwood Grange Academies Trust and organiser of the maths competition, said: “We are delighted with the success of this year’s Maths Masters competition. All the students who took part were a credit to their academy, and their behaviour was as exceptional as their knowledge of math.

“We established the Maths Masters program to help enthuse, inspire and excite students, and particularly the most gifted mathematicians, within the Outwood Family. 

“At Outwood, we believe in putting students first, raising standards and transforming lives. We want to help each student to reach and fulfil their potential. Our Maths Masters program is another example of this and we want to ensure that students are made fully aware of the career paths that are available to students, due to their special mathematical talent.”

Some of the challenges the teams undertook were compiled from the UKMT challenges (United Kingdom Mathematics Trust) and teams had to work collaboratively to solve them, using the answers to crack codes and input scores into a spreadsheet. 

The challenging questions stretched students knowledge and the teams had to show resilience and good teamwork in order to complete the tasks. 

This led to the students having to come up with some unique ways to solve questions, allowing them to demonstrate their ability within the subject, showing high levels of mathematical reasoning and fluency which has helped them to solve mathematical problems.